The Fortieth

The Fortieth

The part of the tattoo I could see looked like the rounded end of a purple hued hilt. Exposed by the unbuttoned collar of his rust-orange knit polo shirt, the elaborately handled dagger tilted right to left. The tattooed knife appeared to be aiming point blank at Carl’s heart. Carl was the good looking tall guy in our class, but he was shy. All the girls tried their best to catch his attention in high school, but couldn’t seem to get him interested. Of course, that made him all the more interesting.
Wine glasses in hand, we stood talking now, unbelievably, forty years later. We shared our life data points: college degrees, employment, marriage, children, and now grandchildren. The easy stuff discussed, we tried to find common Cheney High remembrances. But, again, Carl was the cute but quiet one. He let me blather on about the time Christy and I hid a joint in our locker and spent the entire day at school thinking we were either just too cool or about to become incarcerated juvenile delinquents. Or prom time when Kathy filled a thermos of various types of booze she pilfered from her parents liquor cabinet over the weeks prior to the dance. We drank the awful mix down with a couple of Cokes before entering the crepe-papered gym decorated for the Johnny Mathis song, “The Twelfth of Never.” (Such the high school-er’s naïveté , assuming that with enough streamers and balloons one could actually decorate and pull off an illustrated “Never”.) Carl tried to churn up a recollection of a basketball trip, but his story faded as my eyes kept slipping down to the knife-art on his chest.
“I remember you sitting in front of me in Mr. Reuben’s English class.” My eyes snapped back from the tattoo to his face.
“Ah, Mr. Reubens, the rebel teacher,” I replied trying to mask the bit of excitement in my voice. My high school heart jump started and I felt my face heat up. Had he actually remembered me? “I remember him letting us snack on our lunch during class in his room.”
“Yeah. Remember when Rolf Harris lit up a Bunsen burner and roasted a marshmallow?” he chuckled.
“How could I forget? I tell that story to this day, especially to my friends that teach high school,” I said. Oh, my God, he’s remembering me AND the marshmallow story. My face was beginning a slow burn.
“Good old Mr. Reubens. He thought it was just as funny. That couldn’t happen today with all the school rules on security and safety. Kids these days haven’t a clue as to what fun really is.”
“Yep. Our kids and now these grandkids are pretty darn structured,” I responded. “Tell me more about your children and their families.”
“Oh, you know, they live several hundred miles away from me. I don’t see them much. Their kids and their jobs keep them pretty busy.” With that, Carl stepped back and started to scan the rest of the room.
“Oh, that’s too bad. I try to keep inserting myself in to my kids family life. Probably try too hard and really piss them off on occasion. I guess there is no a perfect balance,” I replied, looking down at my half filled wine glass. When I looked up, Carl had turned.
“Nice to see you Lisa .” With that Carl stepped away and headed towards a table that looked to hold several abandoned spouses, male and female.
I stood frustrated that I hadn’t just asked the simple question, “Ah Carl? Why do you have a knife tattooed on your chest? Just curious.” If he was one of my husband’s friends, I’d have had no problem in asking. But this was Carl and I was Lisa, Lisa the seventeen year old awkward skinny girl. Lisa, the one who had a crush on Carl for three whole years in high school.
I turned and headed for the women’s room, my respite then and now. The last time I felt this way was when things got emotional at work. A fellow manager had come unglued and started screaming at me about one of my employees. I started in on a simple response, but he didn’t let up. I turned and headed straight for the restroom, walked in past the row of sinks and into a stall. There I latched the door and put my feet up on the walls and sobbed. I’d done that several times in my career. My identity hidden with my feet out of sight. If I was still in the throws of my crying jag when someone entered, I’d just flush the toilet and no one was the wiser.
I headed to the woman’s room as Lisa and with Lisa, the seventeen year old. I was again face to face with her. I slammed the stall door shut. Tucking the tail ends of my skirt under me as I sat down on the toilet seat, I pressed my feet into the closed stall door.
No tears this time, but the stack of disappointments started piling up in my brain: my career path that led nowhere, my marriage that was boring as hell, my woulda/coulda/shoulda list that was as long as my arm. It was her fault. I was still dragging around this timid teenager. She was the beacon sitting atop this miserable stack of history. It wasn’t logical that three years of one’s life could color the next forty years of living. But it was and it did.
My butt now totally numb, I dropped my feet down to the floor, stood, flushed the toilet (out of mindless habit), unlatched the door and walked back into the reunion. I spotted Kathy with a tall gin and tonic as I entered the banquet room.
“Hey Lisa, where have you been?” she asked.
“Oh, just using the restroom.” I took a breath. “ Was talking to Carl a bit earlier, though. What’s up with that tattoo? He would be the last one I’d ever imagine with body art.”
“Oh my God! You didn’t hear?” she asked. She had a bit of a slur in the question. She must have been on her third or fourth G & T.
“Hear what?” I asked, preparing myself for a bit of drunken gossip.
“Well, he was married you know.”
“Yes, I knew he married someone he met in college. They had kids. But I thought he was still married.”
“No. See that girl over there at the table with Bill?” Kathy swung her head a bit too hard in the direction of the abandoned spouse table.
“Yeah,” I spotted Kathy’s husband Bill sitting there with a couple other men and a woman.
“Well, Bill was talking to that woman, Michelle. She is Carl’s date.”
“Yes, and?” I asked, knowing that men rarely get to the good stuff.
“…and Bill said that Michelle said that Carl’s marriage ended in divorce because his wife decided that she was a lesbian and was in love with another woman.”
My jaw dropped. I was stunned and then began to doubt. First of all this information was coming from Kathy and Kathy was actually only sober during work hours, and maybe between breakfast and lunch on the weekends. Secondly, her source was Bill and, while Bill wasn’t much of a drinker, he was a guy, for heavens sake. This kind of gossip just doesn’t come from men.
“Okay, maybe. But what does that have to do with the tattoo?” I asked.
“Well, he got that tattoo after the divorce. It is a double edged sword that stretches from his shoulder, slicing into his heart. You know, metaphoricably err, metaphorably err, you know, sort of poetically,” Kathy stammered.
“Geez. That’s awful, I mean that’s incredible, I mean, oh hell, I don’t know what I mean.” I realized I’d left my wine glass in the woman’s room. “I gotta get a glass of wine. I’ll talk to you later, Kath.” I side stepped her and moved into the back of the line at the no host bar.
My mind was racing. My seventeen year old Lisa was screaming, “poor Carl!” My fifty-eight year old self was still trying to process Carl’s pain, the warping of 40 years, and my silly struggle with a long gone teenage self.
The reunion started to dwindle by 10:30 p.m.. We are getting old, I thought as I was finding my coat and purse. Our twenty year reunion went all night. I remember a bunch of us stumbling into a Denny’s for a sobering breakfast at 3:00 in the morning. But, I said a few goodbyes, told Bill to make sure he drove Kathy home, and started for the door. As I was leaving, Carl came up behind me and tapped me on the shoulder.
“It was good to see you Lisa. I’m sorry we didn’t have more time to talk, “ he said.
“Yeah. I guess we’ll just have to wait another ten years to carry on again about dear old Mr. Reubens,” I replied.
“Take care.”
“Thanks, Carl. Drive safely,” I said digging my keys out of my purse. I pushed the door open into the parking lot. Approaching my car, I pressed the unlock button on my key fob, lighting the interior of my car. Such a welcoming sight, back into the known loving arms of current living, I thought as I pulled open the car door.
Pulling out of the parking lot the classics station on my radio began playing Janice Joplin’s, Piece of My Heart. “Oh my God, this is crazy synchronicity or a message from Jesus,” I said out loud. “Break another little bit of my heart now, darling..” Seventeen year old Lisa had sung these lyrics with Janice with all the emotion she could muster; angry with Carl for not noticing her, angry with herself for not making herself noticeable, angry with the world that she couldn’t have what she thought was the most simple thing, love.
When I tripped over that last word, love, I smiled, then chuckled and then laughed and laughed and then began to cry. I had to pull into the parking lot of the all night grocery. Tears were streaming out of my eyes. I rested my forehead on the steering wheel. Love, the teenage version, so innocent, like decorating the Twelfth of Never. At seventeen it is all fluff around an empty word. My high school years spent mentally and emotionally chasing a poor boy whose affections I thought would lift me into the real grown-up world of love. Now I see this man, Carl, with his chest blaring the unhappy state of his love and his life. A dagger in the heart, a double edged sword. Such dramatics. Poor Carl crushed by lost love. My work, my family, my friends, my community all have pieces, huge hunks, of my heart. Years of living have scarred and indeed take a few deep nicks out of it. But there still is a small sweet bit that holds the fingerprints of my little seventeen year old Lisa. I can’t let her go. I can’t live without her. She is still innocent. She can still hurt, but she can still hope that there really is a place for her in that place called the Twelfth of Never, crepe paper and all.